Accelerate Growth by Converting Leads Into Customers

When you boil all of marketing down to a science, what have you got? You have a grand psychological and sociological experiment. In the end, a customer's decision to buy versus not to buy comes down to how they perceive your marketing message and how it makes them feel. What do they stand to gain with your product? What might they lose without it? When they join the ranks of your customers, what does this mean for them? Here is how psychology helps drive growth by converting those promising leads into valuable customers.

Give Them a Sense of Belonging

This concept is a powerful concept in B2B marketing. A quick browse through the product-oriented forums and chat groups for B2B products like app development tools, accounting software, or automation software reveals that B2B users are also a cohesive group that derives satisfaction from being part of a community.

Customers want to feel like part of an elite group, and to believe they are significant because of this association. You can achieve this by setting up forum groups, community chat features, and social media groups where your customers can bond, share important insights about product use and industry trends, and build direct and meaningful relationships with your brand.

Help Them Eliminate a Pain or Experience a Pleasure

Find out where it hurts, and promise to make it feel better. Or, find out how to surprise them with something unexpectedly wonderful.

Whether you are selling acne products, parts for machinery, or devices for healthcare providers, leads become customers for one of two reasons: to relieve a point of pain or to experience some type of pleasure. How does your product accomplish this? Use your marketing data to determine what pain/pleasure points your customers are addressing when they make a purchase. Then make it clear in your marketing messages how your product relieves that pain or produces that pleasure.

It's Got to Be Simple

When given a variety of options (such as buying your product versus doing without or purchasing from a competitor), people will almost always make the choice that seems the easiest. This is especially true when you're dealing with busy business people who already have more than enough on their "to-do" lists. Make the buying decision and the process of making a purchase as easy, smooth, and simple as possible. Adding complexity drives down your chances of converting leads into customers.

People Love a Good Story

This is a psychological fact. For much of human history, there was no written language, or, only the elite classes were educated in writing. Hence, important information like ancestry, valuable knowledge about planting or hunting or treating medical problems, and other information critical to survival was passed down orally. This is so engrained in the human psyche that parents and grandparents tell their stories over and over until their kids and grandkids roll their eyes and go to the other room.

But everyone loves a good story -- that's why the movie Forrest Gump was so popular and why people shell out money for the autobiographies of great characters like Anne Frank and Steve Jobs. Tell a good story. It's remarkably effective.

Make It Relevant

People also have an incredibly short attention span. In the few weeks following a natural disaster or serious fire, insurance companies sell tons of policies and get lots of mileage from the event, fresh in the minds of property owners who fear the flood or earthquake or gas leak could happen to them. But then something else happens, such as an international scandal or act of terrorism, and insurance companies lose that edge.

Keep your messages immediately relevant. What is happening right now? What are people excited about or concerned over that could be used to highlight the importance of your message? Of course, in B2B marketing, it doesn't have to be a mainstream news event, it could be an industry trend or the latest notable research published in a trade journal that has everyone buzzing. Just be sure your messages are speaking to what is on everyone's minds at a given moment.

ReachForce helps marketers increase revenue contribution by solving some of their toughest lead generation and conversion problems. We understand the challenges of developing landing pages that truly drive conversions. Whether you have an acute pain to solve today or prefer to grow your capabilities over time, ReachForce can help you meet your marketing goals, and do it at your own pace.